Messages - rtqw

Dominic's is closed during the winter, but I believe it reopens after spring break (which was last week). Don't know if it is actually open yet, but I know it was open during Preview weekend last year (third weekend of March).

Alternative loans or Grad PLUS will cover the rest of your cost of attendance. Usually Grad PLUS is better than private loans unless you have good and established credit. (and since Michigan is a direct lending school, our interest rate is a bit lower for Grad PLUS for some reason)

I didn't believe this when I heard this, but one of my friends told me that NYU is apparently pretty fun. I still don't believe it, but does anyone have any insight on this? Maybe we should consider which schools are the least fun. I'd place my money on Duke or Chicago.

Why were you expecting NYU not to be fun?

I could see attending NYU and having the experience of living in NYC be fun, but I'm thinking more specifically in terms of the student body of the school and the social activities for law students. I would assume NYU to be hyper-competitive (even though it's such a good school it doesn't have to be). And I may be way off here, but if it is anything like the undergrad, then I would expect there to be many affected "I'm so intellectual and dark and pissed off at my rich parents for giving me a great upbringing and education" types. Like I said though, I don't have personal experience with NYU Law so this is just speculation for me. Correct me if I'm wrong.

For what its worth, at least from visiting NYU last year, I got the exact opposite impression. It didn't match my perceptions of its undergrad at all.

What a lot of 0Ls fail to realize I think, is that your free time is very valuable, starting now. You will have less of it in the next three years (and beyond, probably). It is a scarce resource.

I don't think the harm in preparing has to do with learning the material in the wrong way or whatever - as long as you're flexible enough once classes start to prepare and study for the classes you end up having, instead of the classes that Atticus Falcon thinks you'll have. The harm is that preparing for your exams 6-12 months advance, before you even meet your professor, is a tremendously inefficient use of your time, which you can no longer afford. The time you'll need to spend is great, the benefit is questionable. Lots of people do just fine without prepping before law school.

You can read in your E&E about what is required for res ipsa loquitor, and then when you forget, you'll have to read it again in nine months when you have your Torts final in December. Or you can just learn it once and save yourself some time.

Ultimately, I think the best thing you can do for yourself now is to put a position where you'll hit the ground running in the Fall, instead of trying to start law school now. Towards that end, maybe looking over a few chapters in an E&E or other such books would be helpful in terms of giving you some perspective as to what you'll exactly be learning, but a full time study schedule that PLS advocates seems far to inefficient.

I am just scratching my head here. If you don't pay, if the people who have the means don't pay, then who will pay for this disaster the current Republican president got us into? Or do you think huge growing national debt continuously is sustainable?

Which programs are you talking about? The military? It's the largest national expenditure. Social security? You honestly think ANY president is going to cut that program? OLD PEOPLE VOTE!

As a "liberal" who thinks we do need to get spending under control, we need to pay down the national debt, and we need to stop giving tax breaks when we can't afford to pay for what we already owe, I ask you, seriously, what is the alternative?

Raising taxes is an inefficient means of raising money. There are a lot of distributional effects (such as the Laffer curve (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve) and other disincentives to work). Moreover, government is less than efficient with out money. There are so many problems with logrolling, lobbying and etc that I would have no faith in them spending my money. Any economist will tell you the same thing... The only way we can get out of the debt is to curtail our spending. If you feel that you want to help the government, then go ahead and donate your 30 K. But i sure as hell don't want to be obliged to do that.

The Laffer curve is always trotted out in these debates, but there are never any arguments to suggest we are currently on the right side of the curve (lowering taxes = more money), instead of the left (raising taxes = more money).

Everyone in this thread that doesn't go to michigan or plan to go to michigan agrees with CLS. The essential point is that michigan is over-trolled on this board. No one thinks it isn't a good school. We're just tired of the "other schools just care about numbers" thing from michigan kids.

Which posters here adhere to the idea that law schools, with the sole exception of Michigan, care about nothing but the LSAT in admitting students? I'm guessing you could find a couple (like Upset T14 Student), but like I said before, I don't think it is a fair generalization.

Since you agree with CLS, would you also care to defend the assertion that Michigan trolls also think that Michigan (and Michigan alone) is above using the LSAT?

I imagine that 95% of the posters on this board agree both that 1) Michigan considers the LSAT, GPA and various other soft factors in making admissions decisions and 2) Most other schools do the same. Of course, only some of us here think that Michigan goes beyond the LSAT further then many other schools, and this is a good thing, not some nefarious strategy. But of course, it is much easier for you to paint Michigan with the "over-rated" brush by misrepresenting those views.

I obviously overstated this point a little. I'm sure even the most ardent Michigan trolls will acknowledge that the LSAT is a factor. But there seems to be a repeated insistence that (1) LSAT is a bad measure, (2) somehow it is all that matters to other schools, and (3) Michigan is the only one above using it.

This is precisely the same thing as the admittingly "overstated" point. Michigan is not above using the LSAT and no one has suggested otherwise. And other than Upset T14 student, "LSAT is all that matters to other schools" isn't a fair representation of Michigan students or prospective students here.

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As I said, I admit I overstated the point, but there are a few examples of posts in this thread that imply that Michigan is doesn't "worship the LSAT like all the other schools," or only cares about how "interesting" you are, or just recognizes that those with high LSAT scores have no more to offer "just a pathetic number."

With regards to Michigan only caring about how interesting you are - again, this is pretty much the same thing as the overstated point you admitted before. Michigan cares about the LSAT too. None of the quotes you posted suggest that Michigan only cares about how interesting you are, just like none of them suggest that Michigan doesn't care about the LSAT.

You're not overstating the point a little, you're overstating it by a lot.

Simultaneously here you've been suggesting that Michigan impermissibly uses non-LSAT factors, like optional essays, but at the same time is an LSAT whore just like everyone else. I'm not really sure what exactly you want Michigan to do anymore. To me, an admissions process that considers both soft and hard factors sounds like a good one to me. And since I don't have access to the hidden camera you apparently have in Dean Zearfoss' office, I really don't know that much about the exact process. What I do know is the final result - Michigan's student body, which I'd like to think is pretty good and one of our school's biggest strengths.

In addition, many T14 schools forbid working at all as a 1L. Those that don't forbid it, at least put a very low cap on it.

People here always say this, but I've never heard of any school forbidding working at all. The schools I applied to and looked into followed the ABA line - work over 20 hours prohibited, but discouraged from doing any.

I wouldn't completely discount the affect of grades - on the high (clerkships, etc) or low end (difficulty in finding a job) they do matter, and I imagine that quality of your firm matters when it comes to job opportunities after leaving the firm, or in this economy, the possibility of being laid off. Of course, the general point still remains - grade differences matter much less at a T14 school then they do elsewhere.

I would recommend against having a job during your 1L year. I wouldn't view it so much as how working may affect your grades, but just looking at the value you place on your leisure time. Law school during your first year is a full time job and then some, and most of us end up putting a very high value on our time out side of schoolwork.